Can you give me a quick synopsis of how you determined that? Here is my quick calculation given som info I found on the net: The data I found said the U.S. uses about 20,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Each barrel of oil contains approximately 6,350,000 BTU's of energy. so that would means the oil consumed could raise the temperature of 1.27 X 10^14 ponds of water one degree. The United States covers an area of 3,537,441 square miles, or 9.86 X 10^13 square feet. If we assume the entire surface of the U.S. was covered one foot deep with water that would be 9.86 X 10^13 cubic feet of water. One cubic foot of water weighs 62.427 pounds so that would be 6.16 X 10^15 pounds of water. I think on a sunny day it wouldn't be unreasonable to say the heat of the sun could raise the temperature of a foot of water one degree (especially if we assume the entire amount of solar energy available was actually transferred into the water) So in that case the solar energy was able to raise 6.03 X 10^15 more pounds of water one degree.
Where would the power for the grid come from? All the wind and solar and biomass sources you want to use will barely be able to keep the grid stable in the face of falling energy output from oil and natural gas buring plants. How are you going to double it to also feed all the cars? Natural Gas gave us 17% of our power in 2001, and I'm sure the number is higher now, given that 88% of new power generating plants built since 1993 are natural gas powered (Time, July 21). Plus, lots of gas is used directly for cooking and heating, which would then need to switch to electricity when it runs low. Natural gas is endangered in North America because we have been discovering less and less since the early 1980s. As was shown with the Hubbert predictions, production tends to follow discovery at about a 20 year interval. You can play with the British Petroleum graph here: http://production.investis.com/bp/ia/stat/ Outside sources (Russia and the Middle East) hold large amounts of gas, but it is very hard and expensive to bring it in across the ocean. Ok, lets start at Econ 101. Money is a tool used to determine how to distribute goods. When a good becomes scarce, the price rises because that is the mechanism used to limit the use of the good. Printing more money does not make the good less scarse - it only inflates the price. If you want proof that oil production can peak, just go to the Department of Energy web site and search for US production this century. If you want to go without sleep for a week, search for "hubbert curve" on google. You act like oil is magically created whenever there is need for it. It is not "produced" like a chair in a factory. It is mined. Just like any other mine, it runs out and is closed. All these little "open, mine, close" curves add up to a big curve. Sure, but that is the inevitable result of living on checks the future cannot cash. Wouldn't it be nicer to live at a decent level for a long time, rather than party for a short time and regret it later? Just as the stock market is a terrible place to determine the wealth of a company, the futures market is a terrible place to determine the future price of goods. The act of compressing the gas is a very expensive process (and again, by that I mean that it takes energy, in the form of a portion of the natural gas, to do the compressing). Gas in the Middle East or North Africa or Russia is cheaper than gas in the US and it will only get moreso, so you will see the large industrial users of gas (fertalizer manufacturers, chemical industries) move overseas (and, in fact, it has started already). Our debt is a function of people living it up right now with no concern for the future. Our investment in alternative energy is a pidly amount - and check out the latest Time magazine to see where it actually goes to. Of course they should. I am not talking about them, but about the really powerful people - Bush and all the people he represents. Take a look at this: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec5-162.pdf On the graph on the upper left, you can clearly see the determined effort of domestic oil producers in the face of an oil war - a leveling off for a few years and a slight bump before petering out. (And you can tell this was just from the wildcatters, as the graph on the upper right and lower left show that it was from on-shore, lower 48 production.) The story of how this was done is in the middle bottom graph - the number of wells shot up. And this doesn't even number the dry wells dug, which was astronomical. It is in exploring and drilling that the real cost is located, and it is here the most wildcatters lost their shirts. Once you have a producing well, you don't shut it off because it is fairly cheap to opperate. You can see this in the middle bottom graph - when Reagan got the Saudis to play ball, new exploration stopped, and the number of wells continued the already existing decline of 1965-1975 (maybe even slower), and not a sudden abandonment of their expensive wells as you claim. I'm just complaining. I don't have any power to set policy. I hope that people out there remember what I wrote, so when the slow decline starts, they will know the fault is not foriegners who took our jobs, or Arabs who won't sell us oil, or Europeans who replaced the dollar with the Euro worldwide, or the various outisiders that own our real estate and companies and debt, but with ourselves. And you don't think that humans can rationally look at our future and determine a course of action? You are content to follow an unthinking pattern that is identical to that of bacteria?
> Can you give me a quick synopsis of how you determined that? You are asking me to rehash arguments I made on this forum years ago, and now many of my links are broken. Give me a while to find it.
I didn't check the calculations myself and normally I do but . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.geocities.com/combusem/SOLAR.HTM At a conservative average of only 200 W/m2, the net yearly solar energy input to the planet corresponds to 2.22 1011 GW-year, equivalent to 7.577 1020 btu, or, 757,700 quads, or, 1.29 1014 petroleum barrels/year: this amount is equivalent 353,000 million barrels per day. The actual petroleum world consumption is around 70 million barrels per day. Therefore, the solar available energy power is 5,000 times the total energy power derived from actual world oil produced combustion (counted at 100% efficiency).
The idea of free markets and energy policy is laughable. Show me a place in the world where a national government isn't involved in energy production. And who determines the price of a barrel of oil? The Saudis and their juniors in OPEC. Furthermore, free markets fail because the demand for gasoline is inflexible. For most of the country, there's no substitute for driving. Any long term solution has to address that. Raising the gas, or some other carbon tax is about the only market friendly way of decreasing use, increasing efficiency, and encouraging substitution. The real problem is determining what the gas tax should be. The gas tax pays for transportation infrastructure. It should also reflect any externalities (costs of oil production and consumption not reflected in the price). What might that be? Possible items are the costs of smog, cleaning up oil spills, cleaning up gas stations, cost of troops in Saudi Arabia, etc.
Not to mention that once we get above the planet's atmosphere, solar energy is even more lucrative. And yes, of course, we have to find economical ways of capturing it there and bringing it back down. But like I said before, if the government actually cared about solving the problem, perhaps R&D budgets would get enough boost to tackle these and other problems. Let's see ... under Bush's proposed 2004 budget, the Dept. of Energy requested $533.3M for coal, oil and natural gas R&D and $157.6M for solar, hydro, wind and geothermal R&D. Don't think we'll get where we need to be under this President.
True, very true. This is a point the "there must be less oil because the price is higher" advocates don't acknolege. Demand is flexible BUT the only alternative to oil/gasoline is not using oil/gasoline. Solar, wind, etc. just aren't viable alternatives. Externalities is nothing more than special intersts pushing their agendas. Someone once calculated the externality costs for windmills. They did a poll and asked people how much they would pay to have a windmill farm put out of sight on the other side of the mountains. The amount was quite high. So one externality of windmills, i.e. loss of scenery, is very high but we NEVER see that cost included in alternative energy calculations. Oh and enviromentalists HATE hydro because of the effect that hydro has on the natural balances of an area. Ask Salmon fishery experts about that one. So after all is said and done, this idea of a gas tax is not a good one. I bet Freidman rides the subway and thinks electricity comes from the outlet on his wall.
Why are you so extreme? I’m not talking about changing every car overnight. I’m talking about a gradual policy of switching to alternative fuels. The switching will occur as the cost of oil increases, due to lower supplies. As more switching occurs, the current reserves would last for a longer period. Over that time, alternative will be researched and efficiencies will improve. Well 17% or even slightly higher sounds like good energy diversity. I would be concerned if we were to dependent on one source of energy. Last year we had a rather cold winter, and we pulled down our natural gas storage levels to very low points, and there was lots of concern that there wasn’t enough natural gas, and we would never fill the storages back up, due to electrical generation in the summer. You know what, here we are at the end of the summer, and the storages got filled back up to their normal levels. High prices led to demand destruction, just like you would expect. I think a term like “endangered” is a little misleading. We still know where some very large reserves of natural gas are located, but it has not been economical to drill for it yet. There is a lot of untapped deep water gulf gas, and rocky mountain gas. Yes but there are many other forms of energy, including renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydro (including tidal and ocean currents which have yet to be seriously explored) By investing in those other types as they become economically viable we can extend the life of the known oil reserves out for the foreseeable future, and by then who knows what new technologies will be invented. There is know way you can consider our current consuption a “party” given the huge amount of potential energy available for future generations, especially considering we don’t even know how future technology will come into play. It would be as dumb as someone in the coal era saying to his neighbor, you know you shouldn’t keep your house so warm because there is only so much of this coal to go around, and you wouldn’t want to “party” at the future generation’s expense. And what would you suggest is a better place? Should the government determine the real wealth of companies for us? Once again, what would you suggest is a better place? I do not believe it is a substantial percentage. For instance, line loss to transport electricity is probably a much higher percentage than fuel loss in Liquid natural gas. That is very true, but if you really think efficiency is a good thing then you should applaud that. This is the whole idea behind distributed generation, move the generation close to the point of use in order to reduce lossed energy. Funny though, the liberals who want to tax gasoline, fight every new generating facility, even though they could produce energy more efficiently. So when I take out a mortgage on my home instead of paying rent, I do it because I have no concern for the future? When I take out a student loan in order to get a college education, I have no concern for the future? When companies finance the construction of massive generating facilities they do it because they have no concern for the future? I would dare to say that the majority of debt in this country was taken on for very good reasons. In fact I would be very concerned about our future if people were not willing to take on debt, because it means that they have no confidence in the future. Why does the government have to invest in alternative energy? The private sector will invest themselves when they see that money can be made in it. That is just a political cheap shot IMO. You are ignoring the price indicators that led to the “petering out” between 1982 and 1986 the prices fell from about $55 per barrel to about $20 per barrel, so of course new drilling came to a screeching halt. The wildcatters were speculators. They lost their shirts because they did not hedge their production ie, agree to long term contracts to sell oil in the future at a predetermined price. They were betting that the high prices would continue into the future to pay for the high cost of drilling the wells, when prices tanked they went out of business, and probably couldn’t even afford to pay their employees to maintain their production. Of course some big companies probably stepped in and took over their wells but for them there is incentive not to produce a well even if the marginal cost of production is less than the profit from the sale. (notice on the graph on the bottom right, there is a huge drop in average productivity per well) This is how OPEC works. By limiting the oil available you hope to force prices back up so that you will earn more on the production that you already have flowing, than you lose on the margin of the increased sales volume. Of course the risk there is that someone else will step in and provide the additional supplies and prices don’t go back up, but with the recent luck of the wildcatters people willing to get involved in the industry were nowhere to be found. I’m not sure I ever said anyone abandoned wells. I was just trying to correct the impression you were giving that the wildcatters lost their shirts because they went out in search of oil and could not find any. I agree with that. For a country as powerful as the U.S. to blame foreigners for are problems is silly. I am not arguing that we should be blind to our energy needs, but I am saying don’t panic every time there is an increase in price, and make decisions in that mode. Let’s continue to research alternative fuels at a reasonable pace. Let’s allow market forces to work and encourage people to be more conservative, not government policy that run’s the risk of pushing us into a recession. Who do you think drives the futures market, if not thinking humans? Unfortunately those people in the market are also subject to human feelings that sometimes defy logic and that is why the markets don’t always work as expected. I do trust is the collective wisdom of people willing to put their own money at risk in a futures markets more than I trust the collective wisdom of Washington bureaucrats
I'm against a gas tax because 1) it's regressive and 2) it's not going to lead to conservation. There are already cars available that get great gas mileage. The people who spend $40K for a SUV are not going to switch to a conservationist alternative because they have to pay $100 extra a month. And most people who would be hard hit by the tax don't have access to viable public transportation. Europe can tax gas exhorbitantly because you don't have to have a car in Europe- the public transportation system is fantastic. The obvious solution for conservation is to regulate the gas mileage of SUV and luxury cars.
Damn, just when I though I found someone on these boards that I could agree with. While OPEC may trie to control prices with some limited success, they are not all powerful. I can think of no better long term indicator of the future availability of oil than the market. If you think you know of one, then use that indicator and beat the market, and you will be a very very rich person. If current oil prices are maintained, other alternatives will get serious consideration, especially dual energy sources. Hey, I knew there was a reason I liked you. And thinks that electric cars really do not create any pollution.
Yes. The OPEC members use their oil to maintain a stable high price. They are a cartel. They thwart the free market. Hence market prices are not a true reflection of the available supply.
Why is it that conservatives insist that the government has the technological genius to build (or contract the building of) a fully operational and successful missile defense program, but should just stay out of driving new energy technologies? Are there no Washington bureaucrats at the War Dept.?
I have no confidence at all that the government will be able to "efficiently" build a missle defense system. Even though are military is to notch, I'm not sure it is ost effective. (we have all heard the storie of $400 toilet seats). The difference is, in the area of national defense, there is no market alternative.
Externalities are very real. It's just that externalties which are incovenient to someone's political views are called special interests. The non-point air and water pollution from consumption from fossil fuels is very real, and has very real costs. Figuring exactly what those costs are gets you a Nobel prize. Wind mills are mostly economically infeasible at this point, without adding externalities, so that's not a good example. And the problem is largely abstract- asking people what they would pay vs. what they actually are paying leads to inflated figures. The example is also the equivalent of asking what people would pay so that their neighbor doesn't paint their house neon pink and have dozens of garden gnomes frolicking in the front yard. I think hydro is under utilized resource in many parts of the world. The problem is that some of the dams were just bad ideas. Usually, they were the pet project of some politician or dictator somewhere (Three Gorges).
I have a nearly irresistable urge to bash my head thru a wall. Good thing all I see are cubicle dividers... Spejic is probably right in his claim that the US utilizes more energy than falls in sunlight. Perhaps not, but at any rate we consume far more than "our fair share", and most of it is in waste. We really need to begin conserving, because 12 MPG vehicles are a huge waste, especially when there are manufacturing processes (tires?) that currently require fossil fuels. Are you ready to pay $1000 a tire? Those days are coming. However, I'm just not as pessimistic about the future economy after the coming fossil fuel collapse. At least, as long as we recognize it coming ahead of time and prepare. Which, of course, we aren't. Our future energy debt is how we can afford cheap oil now (and believe me, we are buying for far less than it's worth). How do you place a dollar amount on the geological processes that took place over millions of years to create fossil fuels? That is a cost that nobody ever talks about. And then there are the environmental costs we all know about but choose to ignore. Solar power is like cold fusion, except it actually works. Pump a few hundred million into superconductor research, and we can lick some of the cost, efficiency, and storage (flywheel?) issues. Not to mention all the other benefits of cheap, efficient, mass-producable superconductors. We'll probably never get working cars with solar collectors directly on their roofs, but that energy can be collected on larger arrays and stored, either chemically or more efficiently as angular momentum in a flywheel.
Sorry if I cause you to administer any harm upon yourself, but statement like these bother me. How exactly do you determine what oil is "worth" if not what a free market is willing to pay for it? Some might argue that the OPEC cartel has artificially inflated the price of oil, but if anything that would mean we are buying for far MORE than what it's worth. Just because the supply of something is limited, that does not mean it is valuable, especially if it can be replaced by other things.
It's tricky, for certain. I have no idea how much of a dollar value to put on the manufacture of fossil fuel. Considering we cannot replicate the process, even in a laboratory AFAIK, one could posit that it's priceless. Free markets are not infallible. In fact, they have no feedforward mechanism at all - they are completely feedback. They are very effective, but not foolproof. We know to a high degree of certainty how much more fossil fuel is out there, and we've got a pretty good idea of when it might run out. We should adjust (regulate) that market by adding a feedforward device (tax) to model the future scarcity. Use that tax for alternative energy research. As for the OPEC cartel, the price we pay them is for extraction, and they do not add $55 a barrel (or whatever the current price is) of value, so yes - they do inflate prices.
And I'm saying that alternatives are all way lamer than oil and will cause widespread economic change. The modifications you are talking about are incredibly massive, and are difficult to imagine even if done gradually (and more so when oil becomes expensive, driving up construction costs). It does unitil you get to the peak. We have seen small peaks over and over, whether it's whale oil or coal mined in England or oil mined in the United States. Why is it so hard to imagine one on a global scale? Besides the fact that it is depressing. Sure, but we are not discovering as much new gas as we are taking out of the ground. It is the inevitable sign of a peak. I do have hope for those systems. It is why I think that humans can sustain a Victorian level of economy, or even better. But that isn't what we are doing, is it? We arn't using our current cheap oil to build capital-intensive power generation systems (nuclear, tidal, whatever) for the future. Instead, we are using a large portion of the fuel on frivolous things. Economic benefit comes from moving things around, but when the moving machine is a large SUV that costs twice the amount of energy to manufacture and three times the energy to run as a small car, you are wasting something that could be used for future economic use. We know those future systems won't be as good as fossil fuels, through the very economic system you admire. If they were so efficient, then companies would be producing them on their own and making profit. For example, hydro really is a cheap source of power, and we have already pretty much tapped every reasonable source in America. I didn't say we should abolish markets. But it is ridiculous to claim that markets automatically arive at the best price. If you havn't checked, Amazon is trading for almost $60 a share and it's still going up. It take a percent or two of the gas to power the generator that runs the liquifaction plant. Combined with the large capital costs of the plant itself, the ships and the revieving terminal, it is certainly enough to make industrial users of gas switch their base of manufacturing (it's a lot easier to ship the fertilizer or chemicals around than the gas). A big problem with energy is that each year a larger and larger percentage of worldwide energy is located outside the US. If there was such a thing as a world-wide free market, we would be increasingly irrelevant to the world economy (good thing there isn't). America (and in turn, me) first, baby. So under your world view, America will someday only consist of CEOs running companies outside our nation (and a big army to make it run smoothly)? It is when people get 5% down loans on massivly expensive homes (looks like the housing bubble collapse is starting in Seattle - it's going to spread). It is when people get equity loans just to keep up their standard of living. It is when the government is adding half a trillion dollars to the deficit this year. It is when we have massive trade deficits. Debt is always a part of capitalism, but in almost every type of debt this nation is near or at all-time highs. I didn't say they should. I was responding to your claim that debt is caused by investment in the future (it isn't). I didn't say anything bad about Bush. And you are ignoring the fact that the Viagra of $55 oil still couldn't get production up to what it once was. Of course the oil that the wildcatters found was expensive - it is the fractal nature of resource distribution on the world. The best and easiest sources are always found first. It takes more and more effort to get those last feeble ones. The petering out is a prime example of this "Red Queen" effect. Oil producers had to run harder and harder just to stay still, and when they (temporarily) lost the pressure to keep going, they fell off the back end of the treadmill. Ok, the causation may be tenuous. I will instead change this to "The wildcatters lost their shirts, AND they didn't find any".
> How exactly do you determine what oil is "worth" Well, if you graph oil use to GNP, you will see that every barrel of oil is equivalent to something like $500 of production. That is probably the upper limit. > if not what a free market is willing to pay for it? What free market? All oil has to be traded in dollars, by decree. We have a massive military in the area. We are constantly manipulating (or attempting manipulation of) rulers in oil producing nations. A free market would suck for us.
How quickly do you think these changes need to be implemented? Because as you point out, we have seen small peaks, over and over again, and I imagine that patern will continue. Why do you see some doomsday scenario? Because there is still plenty of cheap alternatives available. I can't see why you feel like you have to hurry this along so much. Massive attempts to interfere with the natural cycle is more likely to do harm than good IMO. So what? Some people enjoy being wastefull. That is life. Shoot how much time and energy do we waste on Television and for that matter sporting events? And those fancy machines that Mr. Ford is building will never replace the good old horse and buggy. That does not mean they wont be beter, it just means that for now most people are betting there is enough oil, so it isn't worth making the investment. I said there is no better way to arive at the best price, not that markets are perfect. If you are so sure it isn't worth that, mortgage your house and sell it short, and you will be rich. This is the stupid argument made by Ross Perot. I have no problem allowing the market determine where goods and services should be manufactured. I am also confident that Americans will step up to any challenge. I have no problem seeing more americans working as doctors, nurses, teachers and computer programmers instead of of putting together widgets on assembly lines. People put down "service" industries, but in the end some of the most highest paying job's are "service" jobs. The U.S. has been preparing to lead the world into the information age, so I am not concerned about our future. How have you proven that debt is not caused by investment in the future? Of course some of it is, and some of it isn't. People who were burned in the first run up, weren't to anxious to see it alll happen again, so people were much less likely to speculate. How about, they lost their shirts, so they stopped looking.
Truly free markets and oil is a ****ing joke. National governments have their hand in every level of oil extracting and refining. Saudi Arabia and their juniors in OPEC have targeted a price band between twenty-two and twenty-eight dollars barrel, enforced by adjusting the quotas in the appropiate direction. However, unforeseen outside events can cause the price to fluctuate outside the band. Current prices are currently around thirty dollars a gallon- possibly because of Iraq. And what about my assertion (and the Economist's) that the gas or carbon tax is the least market distorting way to reduce oil consumption, encourage efficiency and to encourage substitution. And those goals are a good thing- for political and environmental reasons.